Despite unexpectedly giving up three goals in one game last weekend, Mansfield Town defender Matt Preston said there was still time to break the all-time Football League record for clean sheets in one season.

Mansfield Town’s 17-game unbeaten run was halted by a 3-2 defeat with 10 men in a ‘blip’ at Carlisle, but it still left miserly Stags joint top of the League Two clean sheet charts with MK Dons on 12 shut-outs.

Now Preston is eyeing up the 30 clean sheets record achieved by Port Vale in Division 3(N) over 46 games in 1953/54.

Preston said: “We want to get back to keeping clean sheets and earning more wins.

“And we’d love to get the record for clean sheets for a season. We have gone 12 already so it’s certainly do-able. You never know, we’ll see what happens.”

Preston admitted it had been a shock to let in three in one game.

“It was a big blow to us when we came off the pitch. We’re not used to conceding one at the minute, let alone three,” he said.

“It’s not what we’re about, and we need to bounce back from it - and I am sure that we will.

“We’ve shown all season we can defend well. It’s not in our personalities to accept things like this and we won’t.

“It is something that you have to brush off your shoulders as quick as possible and get back to winning. We want to get that momentum back and go on another run.

“Regardless of last Saturday we are still flying, so it’s other teams that have to be worried about us.”

Preston said the team were very proud of their defending so far with just over half the season gone.